


Who We Are

by sevedra



Category: Star Trek (2009), Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, thinky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-09
Updated: 2009-06-09
Packaged: 2017-11-11 10:47:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/477721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevedra/pseuds/sevedra





	1. Empty

Night is the worst time for Jim. Night is when he can’t push the loneliness and desperation away anymore. He fills the emptiness in his soul with endless streams of women. Slim ones, plump ones, blonde ones, brunette ones, tall ones, short ones. Beautiful women and plain; interesting women and dull. As long as he is kissing and touching, the darkness inside stays at bay.

He knows everyone thinks he is a slut. He knows everyone thinks he is happy. No one sees the shadow of sadness in his heart. No one knows how much it hurt to live all those years in Iowa. His mother off-planet, his stepfather indifferent on the good days. He was a boy with no direction and no affection. Now he is a man who refuses to spend any time alone. Surrounded by women who want to fulfill his every need, he is still as lonely as he was in Iowa.

Faces have faded and names were hardly ever even learned. Night after night, bed after bed, soft pliant body after hard unyielding body. Pounding until he was exhausted. Coming as hard as he could to blank out his mind. Pumping and riding until he fell asleep as soon as he finished. Keeping the demons away. Holding onto someone, anyone, as long as the night lasted. Stumbling home in the early mornings knowing he would have to do it all again when dark fell.

And on the nights when the sex wasn’t going to work, the fights would have to do. If he could just get hit hard enough, he might forget he had lived when his father had died. He might believe he had been punished sufficiently for reminding his mother too much of her lost husband. If he bloodied his knuckles and broke his own fingers, he just may let all the built up anger out. But it never seemed to happen. All the broken noses and busted lips, all the concussions and bruises never added up to the pain on the inside.

One day, he knew he’d get it right. He’d hit someone and they’d beat him until he really did feel the pain. He’d hurt on the outside as much as in his heart and he’d welcome the blackout that would come. He’d finally be unconscious enough to never wake up. And then the hole in his heart and the barrenness in his life would be filled. So every night, he tries again. If at first you don’t succeed…


	2. Worth

The Academy is a surprise for Jim. He didn’t expect the classes to challenge. He didn’t foresee the way genuine praise and appreciation would swell his heart. He never thought he’d make true friends. He spent so many years of his life trying to fill a gaping hole in his soul, he almost didn’t notice when it was no longer so empty.

It starts out slowly. He gets together with Bones and a few others for study time instead of hitting a bar for a fight and a fuck. He wakes up in the dark hours of morning slumped over a PADD instead of a woman. He only spends time in the infirmary when he’s had a brutal bout with the required combat classes. He’s passing classes with stellar marks and not flunking out due to fucking up. By the end of his second year, he stops feeling the need to bleed and black out. 

Bones helps him a lot. He is mature and calls Jim on his crap when he sees it. He points out some of the behaviors that are habitual and tells Jim in no uncertain terms that they are destructive. He admits to his own desperate times. He takes Jim under his care and tries to show him that he isn’t useless. That he is a lot more than just the son of a dead hero. That there is a whole world out there that he can take for his own. After a while, Jim believes him.

The brash confidence that he has always shown on the outside starts to be a reality. He no longer feels the need to stretch for approval. He is getting approval every day. Based solely on his own merit; his own ability to see through the complexities and find the answers. He works hard. He studies harder. It becomes a challenge for him to do better and be better. The professors don’t always like the way he comes up with the right answers, but they do like that he is almost never wrong.

He entered Starfleet on the coattail of his father’s reputation. He knows that and he can accept that. But when he graduates, it will be as James T. Kirk, brilliant student, not as that dead hero’s kid. He’s making a name for himself. He’s building a reputation. He can feel his own worth for once in his life. The only obstacle he can see in his future is a no-win scenario test that he is determined to take until he passes. And he has an idea or two for that.


	3. Broken

He was born to be a healer. He nursed small animals back to health in his yard as a boy. He followed his father on rounds and house calls. He always knew where he was going and what he was doing with his life. He had no idea how he wound up on this shuttle to Starfleet.

Maybe getting married was a mistake. He loved her so much. But a relationship required a lot of attention. His focus was always at the hospital. She didn’t understand. She wanted a husband, a man who was there for her and not on call all hours of the night. He could hold a human heart in his bare hand and massage it back to a steady rhythm. But he couldn’t be trusted with keeping her heart happy.

A baby was not the solution. She was a beautiful child and he loved her with every ounce of his being. But he missed her first steps and her first words and her first teeth. The driving need he had to fix and study and work could not be curtailed. It was a part of his psyche that would not let him stop. She barely knew who he was. He knew best what she looked like when she was sleeping.

His father’s illness was the final step on his road to failure. He had never failed at medicine before. He knew his marriage wasn’t working. He knew he wasn’t a good father. But he had always been a good doctor. He had grafted brain stems, but he couldn’t generate new sheaths for his father’s nerves. Hours in the lab were getting him nowhere and time had run out. His father’s pleas for relief had finally pushed him into the unthinkable. He vowed to do no harm and he’d done the ultimate form of that in helping his father to die.

The cure for his father’s illness sent him into a downward spiral of drinking and self-hatred. She’d finally had enough and kicked him to the curb. The judge had given her full custody and he didn’t even have visitation due to his constantly saturated state. Taking the first shuttle out of Atlanta and hiding in the bathroom the entire flight had ended with him in Riverside, Iowa. A nowhere place with only one good bar and a Starfleet shipyard. Sobbing his story to a Captain had somehow gotten him onto yet another shuttle. This time he was headed to Starfleet Academy. He was stone cold sober for a change and frightened out of his mind. But the kid by his side seemed to think it would all turn out fine. So Leonard decided to believe him.


	4. Heal

He thought Starfleet was going to kill him. The academics weren’t that hard for a man who already had his medical degree. But the system was tough. He was not used to being low man on the totem pole. He wasn’t accustomed to answering for his time or his actions. He knew how smart he was. He didn’t like having to actually prove himself to the professors.

Staying sober was the hardest part in the early days. The kid from the shuttle was always up for hitting a bar. The kid had started calling him Bones. Said that if that was all he had left, then he didn’t have Leonard anymore either. McCoy actually found that comforting. He left Leonard behind in Atlanta and decided San Francisco was a whole new beginning. After a while, he stopped needing a drink so badly to get through the days and nights. Then he saw what was happening with Jim.

He’d never seen anyone on such a self-destructive path before. They never talked about the past. Both of them had been running when they caught that shuttle. He made an effort to find other stuff to do to interest Jim. He challenged him to all-night study sessions. He coerced him into taking more combat classes. He tried to be there when the kid might have a bad day. He found his own purpose in trying to heal Jim.

The blackness in the back of his brain receded. His father’s needless death became a lighter weight. Knowing he hadn’t come up with a cure in time was no longer the defining moment in his career. He knew he wasn’t perfect. He wasn’t a god. The power of life and death resided in his hands, but he couldn’t win every time. Sometimes, death took its share and the cost was something he had to learn to live with. He was back on target. He had purpose again.

He became a better doctor and a better student through his friendship with Jim. He felt pretty confidant that he was making Jim a better man and a better student, too. They worked well together. They studied well together. They kept each other out of the bottom of a bottle. Jim kept him out of the darkness in the back of his mind. He kept Jim out of brawls and beds. He was prepared to stand by Jim when he came up for an academic dishonesty charge. He understood the driving need to find a better solution when the options were all unacceptable. And when Vulcan sent a distress call, they were both primed and ready to win.


End file.
